Doing Time
Series: The Time Police, Book 1
By: Jodi Taylor / Narrated By: Zara Ramm
Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
Oooooh! Let’s get ready for a new series, y’all!
Okay, the thing about me is that I experience books/audiobooks as I read/listen rather than absorb them. This makes it not only MOST enjoyable to listen to a book time and time again, but it makes it rather, er, uhm, NECessary. And I’m soooo not proud of that.
Why do I mention this woeful character flaw? Well, it’s like this, see. It’s cuz I listened to Jodi Taylor’s Just One Damned Thing After Another right after I listened to it a first time because I could not for the LIFE of me, remember it enough to review it soundly. And I listened to The Nothing Girl AGAIN to review it, even tho’ I’d listened to it, and enjoyed the heck outta it, THREEEE times before. So, what I’m saying is that here, with Doing Time, the ever-enjoyable Ms. Taylor has started a spin-off from her vastly popular, vastly lengthy, “St. Mary’s” series, and she uses a few of the characters from there, here.
And I don’t remember them… Seeee?!? I’m soooo not proud of that.
So I can’t tell you, exactly, who’s whom, and I wish I’ve listened to more than the first in that series because I’d truly like to know who, like, saaaay, freaking Matthew is! Apparently, he’s Max’s son, was abducted and suffered horribly back in time as a chimney boy, was abused mightily, and now here he is: One of three possibly outta their depth recruits, the likes of which, the Time Police have never seen.
The story opens with one of our heroes, Jane Lockland running like the dickens awaaaay from her grandmother’s unhappy and demanding home (It’s cuz of an exploding stuffed seagull…). She decides that the only place that’ll have her near-penniless self, the best place to hide away from her hated and much-feared grandmother’s wrath, is with the Time Police. In her team is fellow feckless Time Police candidate Luke Parrish, GROSSly irresponsible and dissolute son of a multi-billionaire father who’s HAD it with him and has basically made it mandatory that they accept Luke since a massive donation was made to the organization. Luke has been financially cutoff, is being shunned, and has no choice but to go… where he fumes… and beds every willing female who catches his handsome eye. A third candidate dropped out. And the final candidate in their Grunt Work Group is Matthew, son of the infamous Max of St. Mary’s, and he feels he has a lot to prove. He’s an outcast extraordinaire, doesn’t talk much, and knows how to take a beating… and he gets beaten quite a bit.
I liked how the disparate trio shudder at being grouped together, each thinking the others are losers and flighty, but through shared trials and tribulations, shared slights and humiliations, shared burdens here and there, they each grow to lean upon each other. And they use their status as Undesirables to their advantage, taking prime seating in the Cafeteria because people get up and leave the table: Leaving rather than being caught dead with the self-proclaimed Team Weird.
The book has a few instances of time travels to famous scenes (Anubis makes an appearance, and that pretty much makes all three wanna soil their undies), and time travel to lesser known eras (Luke can’t wait to take a full body scrub after their first mission jaunt to the unutterably filthy 20th century). The trio turn their character flaws into irreverent strengths, finding unconventional ways to handle things and get things done. Oh, and to do stuff like save a rabbit lifted from Australia (Before it could become a Rabbit Nightmare to that continent).
The only real flaws of the book, I felt, were that it felt like mostly setup for more books to come in that it was mostly character setup rather than real action. Plus, while Matthew has a verrrrry interesting background, it’s only alluded to, and I was wondering if it’s because his story was a main part of one of the St. Mary’s books. Which makes me sad that I’ve yet to read the books I have of that series, just sitting idly in my Library. It also makes me just a taaaad miffed because many, many authors are able to write books in a series which have enough information from book to book so that the reader/listener doesn’t feel as lost as I felt whenst trying to feel my way around Matthew as a main character. This lack of information for him left him as a vague character, his ties to St. Mary’s being the most interesting thing about him. Luke and Jane come through far more well-fleshed out than he does.
And seriously? Jane rocks. She has an alter we see as Wimpy Jane, all her phobias, all her fears of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, coming to the fore. But she tries hard, and we see her character grow and eventually blossom. But the best part of Taylor’s writing is that forces come into the story whereby Jane, happy and self-assured Jane, gets the spunk and spirits squashed outta her, and we see her as someone who has to pick herself up, find self-esteem outside of Team Weird, and maybe, just maybe, come to believe in herself, existing on her own two feet.
There are heroes and villains, and shadowy figures, along with plots, and even a little murder done in the name of what various cabals think is right. Sure, the plot is rather thin, but really, y’all, the characters are so engaging. And Jodi Taylor is just sooo funny, with tongue in cheek observations, and perverse yet wryly hysterical pronouncements about society and about human nature.
Need I say that Zara Ramm knocks the narration out of the park?
I do? Well, she does indeed do her usual stellar job, capturing a MASSive variety of characters without doing the annoying vocal gyrations that a less seasoned narrator would employ. Plus, she really knows how to build the drama up and, as the chapters are all: CLIFFHANGER! this is mighty neat and keeps ya listening loooong after you’ve told yourself that you mean it this time: Just to the end of the chapter before turning it off and going to bed. Nope. Ramm’s keen sense of drama and timing will have you going just one chapter more then one chapter more then gosh I mean it just one chapter more!
So here I am, in a quandary. Doing Time juuuuust came out, and baaaaarely came out as an audiobook, so I’m assuming it’ll be a stretch of time between the cinematic ending here and the next book in the series. Now what am I s’posed to do with myself?
Hmmm…. St. Mary’s, anyone…?
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